AN AUTHENTIC OUTFLOW OF EFFLUVIAM

For as long as I've known him, my dear, dear friend David Schoffman has tried desperately to lay waste the claim that he is a sleazy, lying, unscrupulous knave. His (envious and resentful) colleagues regard him as something of a joke. On any given day one can reliably find mon cher David sipping a steamed milk mocha (known elsewhere as a latté, elsewhere still a cappuccino, in other places it's called café au lait and in certain Mediterranean countries known for their direct and frank powers of description, a 'reverse coffee') at his favorite minor, mini-mall chain franchise bistro which shall remain for now nameless due to the reliable spasms of nausea its elicits in someone more accustomed to nursing cassis infused white wine cocktails on balconies of Beaux Arts architectural masterpieces such as myself.

You see the problem with David is that after years of reading all manner of self-help manifestos and so-called 'books', he is still not at peace with the startling reality that wherever you go you take yourself with you.

On the wall of Schoffman's cell at the Kosala Zen Retreat, 2006

He once spent two weeks in silent meditation at the Kosala Zen Retreat in Malibu in order to find what the glossy brochure described as his "authentic being." What he learned instead from the wise and enlightened sensai after fifteen days of eating brown rice and root vegetables and parting with a little over $1700 was that wherever you go you take yourself with you.

Another time, at the relentless prodding of an ex-girlfriend who insisted that if they remain together as a couple David would have to go through the hard process of becoming 'complete', he attended a Labor Day Weekend intensive seminar called "Placing The Past In The Past; Sealing The Future With A Suture." Much tough love and holding the sweaty palms of total strangers yielded not so much completion as dire constipation since one of the more draconian rules of the event was the parceling of bathroom breaks to an unhealthy one per day. 

"Once a dick always a dick," (un queue est toujours un queue) was how my world weary Oncle Maurice used to put it and I think that pretty much sums it up. It is no doubt due to distance that I remain loyal to my flawed and feckless friend.

He no longer paints, barely reads, hardly ever goes outside and lives on a meager diet of steamed milk and espresso.

But the funny thing is, I think that after all his futile searching and in spite of all his pathetic groping after significance, my good friend David has finally found his real and true self.